Your top questions answered for hair and beauty

If you have a query that requires expert assistance, please contact us.

The only qualification that will count in the headline measures and performance tables will be the BTEC First from 2010 (until June 2014) and then the BTEC First from 2012/13 from 2015 onwards.

Please note that the BTEC First from 2012/13 qualifications will be staggered and headline measures for some qualifications will not be listed before 2016.

As most of the hair and beauty courses are BTECs and NVQs, the materials you can use for delivery are quite flexible. You can see some of the resources that are available on the Pearson publications website. You can either use these in their current form, or adapt them according to your learners' needs. Any changes must be internally verified and documented.

You can also use the Assignment Checking Service to have your assignment briefs checked by a member of the senior assessment team. For more information on this and to access the link to submit your briefs, visit our Assignment Checking Service page.

OSCA (Online Support for Centre Assessors) is the online system that facilitates coursework accreditation and provides access to examples of marked candidate work.

For OSCA administrative queries you will need to get in touch with our OSCA team at btecdelivery@pearson.com.

For information on quality assurance, assessment, internal verification, Lead IV and the sampling process, please see our Quality Assurance Handbook.

For special considerations or requirements, please get in touch with our Special Requirements team at uk.special.requirements@pearson.com.

Please get in touch with our training team at pdt@pearson.com, who should be able to help you.

For more information on the requirements to become a teacher of hair and beauty courses, please see the Department for Education's website on teaching requirements.

For NVQs, the exact level qualification or higher will be required (along with the A1V1 or TAQA in order to deliver and assess).

For BTECs, the qualification requirements are down to the centre that recruits you. Experience within the subject to be taught is the typical requirement. Again, it is ultimately down to the centre's requirements for those who wish to teach BTECs in their facility.

The only certification that Pearson encourages is OSCA certification, which is a certificate stating that you know how to assess and verify. This test is free and you can find out more by emailing our BTEC team at btecdelivery@pearson.com.

For the steps of assessor (1), Internal Verifier (2), and Lead Internal Verifier (3), you can only be one of these steps or steps 1 and 3 together: you can never be step 1 and 2, or 2 and 3, as this is a breach of trust. In other words, you can't mark your own work and verify it, or verify someone else's work and then lead verify it, as this would be a breach of trust.

The new BTEC First from 2012/2013 does have a paper-based exam and the core and mandatory units are both mandatory. The number of core and mandatory units will increase according to the size of the qualification.

Please note: Hair and beauty does not have an NQF next generation BTEC First qualification at this time. Feel free to continue on the 2010 QCF version.